A typical contact center consists of a number of human agents, with each assigned to a telecommunication device, such as a phone or a computer for conducting real-time or email communication session. The agents typically use these devices to provide sales, customer service, or technical support to the established or prospective customers of a contact center.
Typically, a contact center or its client will advertise to its established or prospective clients, or other third parties a variety of different contact numbers or addresses for a particular service, such as for billing questions or for technical support. The customers or third parties seeking a particular service will then use this contact information, and the incoming caller will be routed at one or more routing points to a human agent at a contact center who can provide the appropriate service. Contact centers that respond to such incoming contacts are typically referred to as “inbound contact centers.”
Conventionally, a contact center operation includes a switch system that connects callers to agents. Contact routing in an inbound center, however, is a process that is generally structured to connect callers to agents that have been idle for the longest period of time. More generally, the contact center may set up a queue of incoming callers and preferentially route the longest-waiting callers to the agents that become available over time, without further analysis. Such a pattern of routing contacts to either the first available agent or the longest waiting agent is referred to as “round-robin” contact routing. However, this “round-robin” approach does not always deliver a high-quality customer experience.